Modern media planning short-changes small advertisers
In the last decade the craft of media planning has changed to an unrecognisable extent.
Fragmenting audiences, an explosion of channels and formats, and the resulting shift to tech-enabled planning and execution has utterly changed what most media plans look like and how they’re arrived at.
For large advertisers, the changes in the landscape have posed a shared fundamental question: How do we replace the huge cheap reach and attention we used to be able to buy easily on TV, for as little investment as possible?
It’s a massive, important question, and one which is being answered, with increasing sophistication, by the holding companies. Powered by planning offerings which are as much data science as they strategy, balancing media almost like a graphic equaliser, guided by a sort of actuarial logic.
It’s the right solution for these massive advertisers, and because massive advertisers spend massive money, it’s the right strategic bet for the holdcos to make. Problem is, if you’re not a massive advertiser, you have other, more urgent questions that need answering.
The logic of scale planning doesn’t translate for advertisers with modest budgets. However much the ‘laws of growth’ are misquoted, you will not improve your share of a market in which you don’t lead by doing the same thing as your bigger competitors with less money.
When small brands mimic the approach of their larger peers, you outsource all responsibility for brand growth to your creative asset. It’s an unfair, impossible burden, and even the best creative execution can’t escape the fundamental need for enough people to see it often enough.
The approach these advertisers require demands thinking, not tech. Grey matter, not a black box.
Once you can’t afford to reach everyone enough then you have to make careful choices about what you sacrifice and where you commit. Those choices require a real understanding of the category, your audience and the cultural landscape, and a careful assessment of the routes available. Then proper creative thinking about how to really commit to the choice you make.
This isn’t a new way to plan, but it is a newly-neglected one. I just ran a training session for the wider industry on what we think this kind of planning looks like, well over 200 planners signed up. The will to do this work is there but the muscle is atrophying across lots (maybe most) of the industry.
But for the vast majority of advertisers who will never be able to match their bigger rivals on budget, it’s the only way to deliver outsized performance.
As always, I'd love to know what you think.
Greg